By Matthew Saari Whitehall long has been lauded as the Birthplace of the US Navy. Forevermore it will be known as the home of Sasquatch. The Whitehall village board passed a resolution unanimously last Tuesday officially adopting the elusive beast as the village’s official animal. “This came to us from Dave Molenaar and it’s in […]

By Matthew Saari During a moment of “happenstance,” a former Whitehall mayor accused the current administration of holding an illegal meeting. Former mayor Ken Bartholomew wrote a letter to the village board detailing the experience, which Mayor Phil Smith read – and responded to – during last week’s board meeting. “While at the Whitehall […]

By Matthew Saari Whitehall village residents have spoken – they want their police department. More than 50 people turned out for a public hearing regarding the future of the Whitehall Police Department – so many that village officials moved the hearing to the Whitehall courtroom to accommodate everyone. Village and town residents were joined by […]

By Matthew Saari As the Whitehall Village Board was proceeding with steps to demolish the decrepit building at 160 Main treet – known as the Flat Iron – the structure collapsed on its own about noon last Sunday. The board met last Tuesday to address the question of asbestos as part of the process of […]

By Matthew Saari If there’s a strong push to disband the Whitehall Police Department to reduce village taxes, there’s an equally strong movement to keep the local force in place. When David Molenaar sent the Times a letter outlining “the debilitating cost” of maintaining the village police department last April, former mayor Ken Bartholomew responded […]

By Matthew Saari A decades-long battle over a structural hazard may be coming to a close for the village of Whitehall. Mayor Phil Smith broached the topic of taking ownership of the notorious Flat Iron building, with the goal of demolishing the building, during last week’s village board meeting. Smith said trustee Tim Watson had […]

By Matthew Saari In an effort to keep the tax rate flat, the Whitehall Village Board has decided to dip into the fund balance for some of the new budget’s funding. The board met Tuesday night and debated for nearly 90 minutes different avenues which would allow them to pay the village’s bills but not […]

By Matthew Saari The former Aubuchon’s hardware store which has long stood vacant on State Route 4 in Whitehall has new owners and will reopen this month as Upstate Discount Warehouse. For the better part of a month Greg Knapp and Mohammad Bilal have been shipping goods into the store in preparation for an April […]

By Matthew Saari & Krystle S. Morey Granville A state report rates Granville the third-most fiscally stressed village in New York. The municipality earned a “moderate fiscal stress” rating with a score of 59.6 percent in the study completed recently by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office. “We assumed that was going to be,” said Mayor […]

By Matthew Saari More than a year ago, the Whitehall Village Board sent a letter to Tennessee-based Dollar General, requesting that its store on Route 4 be expanded to include a full-service grocery store, something Whitehall does not have now. A grocery store has yet to materialize, and in fact Dollar General never responded to […]